Snatched Memories
by Cathook
Summary: While on weekend leave from the SGC Daniel gets kidnapped. Who has taken him, and what do they really want? Will the rest of SG-1 find him in time?
1. Snatched Memories - Chapter 1

This story started with the prompt, "Write a scene that begins with a ransom note", from the book _642 Things to Write About_.

**Summary:** While on weekend leave from the SGC Daniel gets kidnapped. Who has taken him, and what do they really want? Will the rest of SG-1 find him in time?

**Timeline:** This story is set in season seven of Stargate SG-1, somewhere around episodes 8 and 9.

Please leave a **review**!

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><p><strong>Snatched Memories<strong>

_Daniel Jackson is alive – for now. If you want him to remain alive you will adhere to the following instructions._  
><em>You will not come looking for him. You will wait for further instructions and prepare to deliver a ransom in accordance with those instructions.<em>  
><em>If you do not follow these instructions to the letter Daniel Jackson will die.<em>

The briefing room fell silent when Sam finished reading the typed message on the note in her hands. She hadn't been the one to find it – that had been Jack. When their resident geek hadn't showed up for work after their weekend leave he had tried calling on the phone, but after the third attempt went unanswered he had decided to go check on him. It was entirely possible that Daniel just hadn't heard the phone because he was too immersed in a translation or some such, but Jack couldn't help worrying. Unfortunately, this time worrying had been exactly the right thing to do. Jack had found the front door ajar and the apartment had been a complete mess of toppled furniture and broken antiquities. The note had been on the table, and barely had he read it to the end before he rushed to gather the rest of his team.

Jack leaned forward onto the table, resisting the urge to grab a nearby pen and fiddle with it. He could see the same tension that surged through him in the faces around him. Sam was easiest to read; she wore her feelings on her sleeve, but he would never make the mistake of counting that fact as lack of strength. They all had strength around this table, different kinds that all served their purpose. General Hammond had the strength of a commander; to lead but also to fiercely care about those he led. Jack had always respected him for that. Teal'c's strength was otherworldly, once as alien to Jack as the man himself had been. Now, after years of working together, struggling together, fighting and – _literally_ – dying together, Jack had come to understand him. Despite Teal'c's perpetually stoic face he could see the steel in his eyes that spoke clearly of what awaited whoever had dared lay a hand on Daniel. _Daniel – he has strength as well._ Jack wasn't sure if he knew it himself, but Jack did. He'd known ever since that first mission to Abydos, ever since the bottle eyed geek took a staff blast meant for him. He'd saved everybody back then, like he always did: the abydonians – _me_. Jack would have to rely on that strength to keep Daniel alive until they found him.

Realization dawned; his worry ridden thoughts had scattered and run away with him in the silence. _Am I getting too old for this? Maybe it's time to consider that retirement again. Maybe…when Daniel's safe._ He forced his thoughts back – and halted his fingers again on their way to finding a fiddle toy.

"So, what do we think?" he asked, a nod to the note the only elaboration.

Sam met his eyes, reading his thoughts – or at least guessing them. That was the beauty of a good team. She studied the note again, running her finger along the typed lines as if it would make them divulge anything further.

"It looks legit," she said in the end, and the scowl Jack gave her made it clear that wasn't the answer he'd wanted.

"Yeah," he said, "but what's the chance that's really the case."

There was silence again as they considered his words, all of them reaching the same conclusion. Jack had a point; it wasn't very likely this was as simple as a none-Stargate related kidnapping.

"What shall we do?" Teal'c asked, and his grim voice made it obvious what he wanted to do, even if the note had explicitly said not to come looking for Daniel. Jack knew the feeling, and he suspected there was a similar grimness echoing in his own voice when he spoke. He had no intention either to abide by the kidnappers' instructions.

"We're going to find whoever took Daniel," he said, standing up with his hands firmly planted on top of the table. "And then we'll ask them politely to give him back."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow.

"And if they refuse?"

"We ask them _not_ politely." Jack's voice dropped to an ominous growl. "If they think they can just take Daniel and they're not going to pay for it, they don't know who they're dealing with."

Teal'c smiled, not with joy but in stone cold determination. It was the kind of expression that could scare a man out of his skin, but at the moment it just made Jack glad to have him on their side. His eyes shifted to Sam, and he saw the struggle in her eyes. She was right there with them, having no problem with disregarding the ransom note fully and entirely, but protocol demanded their commander's permission to mount a rescue mission. Jack frowned and met the general's eyes. There was no conflict there.

"Keep me posted," Hammond said and gave him an approving nod, "and let me know if you need anything."

A wave of marginal relief washed over Jack's features before they settled back into grim determination. His thoughts weren't scattered anymore. They still screamed with worry, but his military experience was already focusing the feeling into a knife edge that would cut down anything that stood in the way of finding Daniel.

Sam and Teal'c hurried to their on-base quarters to get changed into street clothes, while Jack impatiently paced back and forth in front of the elevator waiting for them. He hadn't gotten changed out of his when he rushed into the base under Cheyenne Mountain with the ransom note in his hand and metaphorical steam coming out of his ears.

Finally, after far too long in Jack's opinion, Teal'c appeared around the corner wearing khaki cargo pants and a muscle tee under a billowing trench coat. As he walked he pulled a beanie over his head to cover the golden Apophis emblem on his forehead. A few steps behind him came Sam, holstering a zat'nik'tel in a shoulder harness under her black leather jacket. In her free hand she held two more zats that she handed to the two men.

"The general authorized these for us," she said as way of explanation.

* * *

><p><em>Darkness.<em> Daniel blinked and reopened his eyes wide. _Still darkness_. There was not the tiniest sliver of light to see by, to tell where he was. Lacking sight he turned his attention to his other senses. _Hearing. _He strained his ears, concentrating, but the silence was as thick and impenetrable as the darkness – almost. If he lay completely still and held his breath he could eventually make out the soft sound of water dripping. It reminded him of a leaky faucet, but somehow he doubted that was what it was. _Smell._ The dark space around him smelled wet and earthy. It was the smell of underground. _Maybe a cave? Sense._ The ground he lay on was uneven and despite the dank smell of the room it was relatively dry. He spread his hands out from his body and across the surface, finding rock under a thin layer of sand and…_straw?_

He sat up and with one hand over his head he carefully got to his feet. There was no ceiling in reach, not even when he stretched up on his toes. Reaching his hands out in front of him he started moving forward, and after a few steps he reached a wall. His sensitive fingertips danced across the rough stone, finding straight lines dividing the surface into square blocks. _Manmade, not natural_, he noted. He turned ninety degrees and with one hand on the wall and the other stretched out in front of him he continued his exploration, counting the steps to determine the size of the room. _One, two, three, four, five…_ Another wall connected with the one he'd followed and almost immediately his fingers slid across a new surface – _wood. A door?_

Eagerly he felt for the door handle, but no matter how he searched he couldn't find it. He ran his hands all over the wooden surface – even up high and low – twice, but the wood was perfectly solid. The edges sat seamlessly into the surrounding stone, leaving no purchase for him to pry on. He tried pushing; throwing his weight against the door, but all he managed to do was bruise his shoulder. Despite the wood feeling damp under his hands, which he hoped would have weakened it, the door didn't budge. _It must be barred from the outside._ His dawning suspicion had just been confirmed. Someone had shut him inside this dark room.

He tried to remember what had happened, racking his mind while he continued the mapping of the room. The last thing he remembered was going to bed with one of his favorite books. _The wall with the door is eight steps long._ He had a vague recollection of waking up with the book lying open on his chest. His glasses must have been crooked, they always got squashed when he fell asleep reading. He paused and felt for the spectacles on his face. They weren't there. _I must have lost them, or had them taken from me._

He continued measuring the wall, reaching the corner at eight steps. The back wall was again eight and the last closed up the room to a pretty much perfect square. There was nothing on the walls as far as he could tell. The only anomaly in the solid stone was the equally solid wooden door. Daniel tried tackling it again but that only added to the soreness in his shoulder. There were no windows either, unless they were further up than he could reach which would make them of no use to him anyway. _The lack of windows would account for the lack of lighting, though._

On his hands and knees he explored the floor. The search turned up a bucket, which by the smell of it was what passed as facilities here, and a ragged blanket on top of a heap of foul smelling straw. _I guess that's the whole of it._ He sat down on the blanket and tried again to remember how he had ended up here. There was the clear memory of going to bed, reading, and at some point drifting off to sleep. Then there was the more fuzzy recollection of waking up. _What was it that woke me?_ He closed his eyes, despite the action feeling quite redundant in his current location, and tried to put himself back in his apartment, in his bed.

The book had been heavy on his chest. Jack always teased him that he didn't seem to understand the 'light'-part of light night reading. His glasses had definitely been crooked, uncomfortably dislocated off of the ridge of his nose and pulling on his left ear. He remembered taking them off and trying to adjust them, but ultimately putting them back on with a note to himself to fix them in the morning. _I wonder if it is morning yet._ The darkness made it impossible to judge the passage of time – _and apparently to concentrate as well. Or is there some other reason for that?_ He tried, yet again, to remember. _I got up to see what had waked me. And then what happened?_


	2. Snatched Memories - Chapter 2

Three fourths of SG-1 arrived at Daniel's apartment to search for clues. Apart from the door which Jack had closed behind him when he stormed out, and the note that was now in Sam's hand, the residence was in the same state as Jack had found it earlier.

Sam paused in the door to take an overview of the mess, and try to piece together what might have happened. There was stuff everywhere, toppled over and broken, but the disarray seemed to be focused in the living room. She followed Jack into the bedroom, finding it not precisely in order, but rather in the type of disorder that was simply the result of someone getting out of bed and not returning to it. There was a book on the thrown-back cover, a thick tome with 'Egypt' in the title.

Jack picked it up and flicked through the pages, visibly gritting his teeth at the thought of Daniel being forcefully taken away from this thing that he loved so much. The grimace lasted only a moment, and then he carefully placed the book down again and walked back into the living room.

"I think he woke up," he said, "and came out here. Maybe they made a noise breaking in or something. They must have jumped him when he came into the living room."

"Looks like he gave them a fight."

Sam indicated the furniture and fragments of probably priceless artifacts strewn across the floor. Jack nodded with a small but proud smile. Then his eyes seemed to zero in on something among the rubble, and he bent down to pick it up.

"He lost his glasses," he said, showing Sam and Teal'c the twisted pieces of metal with a few little bits of glass still clinging to them.

Sam could feel the worry radiating from the colonel. She knew it was taking all of his self control to keep his anger curbed and focus on finding clues to whom had taken their friend. _The kidnappers must really not know who they're dealing with_, she thought and felt her lips twist with an evil grin_. You'll find out, don't you worry. You've got something you've never seen before coming your way._

"There's no blood," she noted, hoping it would calm Jack a little.

The colonel nodded.

"That's something, I guess."

* * *

><p>The door opened with a creak that sounded right out of a horror flick. Light flooded in, painfully blinding Daniel. For several seconds he could see nothing but whiteness. A dark silhouette emerged, blurry both from the blinding light and Daniel's lack of corrective lenses.<p>

"Get up!"

The voice was harsh and commanding. There was an implicit threat in it that Daniel found himself in no position to test. He scrambled to his feet and waited for further instructions. The voice's owner stepped inside and grabbed his arm, roughly pulling him through the door and out into a long narrow corridor.

While they walked Daniel tried to get a better look at the man. He was still squinting from the contrast of light, but he could see he was wearing a pair of jeans and a white coat. He tried to take a look at the man's face, but his sight was not clear enough to make out any details.

The man shoved him into another room. This one was white and cold, like a hospital – _or a morgue_. It was a strange thought that Daniel didn't really know where it came from. He only knew that it made him sick.

A chair stood in the centre of the room. It looked like a dentist chair, the kind that could be tilted and raised or lowered according to the needs of the doctor. However, this chair had leather straps on the armrests and footrests. His keeper pointed for him to sit, and he reluctantly obliged. As expected the man proceeded to strap his arms and legs down tightly. Daniel discretely tested the bonds but found them unsurprisingly unbudging. He was completely at his captor's mercy.


	3. Snatched Memories - Chapter 3

They had fine combed Daniel's apartment twice, and almost given up, when Sam found something for them to go on. She had stepped outside for a moment to get some fresh air but soon found herself restlessly pacing back and forth in front of the door to the apartment building. Her eyes flickered across the pavement, seeing without seeing, and that's when she saw it.

The words from the ransom note ran through her head. They had been running, over and over again, since the first time she read it. There was something about it, something about the wording that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Until now.

She ran up the stairs and rushed in to Jack and Teal'c, who were going over the living room for the third time. The expressions of their faces told her they had found nothing new.

"Sir, I had a thought," Sam said and picked up the note. Jack turned to her with a spark of hope in his eyes. It was a clear expression of the trust he had in her and she hoped her idea could live up to it.

"Look at this," she said, showing him the note. "It doesn't say 'don't call the police'. It says 'don't come looking for him'. So whoever wrote this note knows who we are. They know it would be us who found the note and they know enough about us to know that we would come looking for Daniel ourselves."

Jack took the note and inspected the sentence she had pointed out.

"So…definitely not an ordinary kidnapping?"

"Yeah, I think it's someone we know. Probably an enemy of the SGC."

"Well, that does narrow down the suspect list somewhat."

Sam looked around and spotted a whiteboard among the clutter. It had a partial translation written on it, but most of it had been erased when it fell onto the sofa. She straightened the board up and with a regretful grimace she erased the rest. Then she took up the pen and wrote 'suspects', drawing a sharp line underneath.

"Let's see," she said, biting the back of the pen as she thought. "Who have we got?"

"It doesn't sound like Anubis," Jack offered and Teal'c inclined his head in agreement.

"It would be uncharacteristic for a goa'uld to operate so clandestinely."

"Ba'al has the brains for it."

Teal'c gave another inclination of his head; his way of saying 'you have a point'. Sam wrote the name Ba'al on the board.

"What about the Trust?" she said.

"Yeah, could be," Jack replied, and his voice dripped of despise. "Or it could be Kinsey."

Sam nodded and wrote up both the Trust and Kinsey. They thought for a while longer but it seemed they had exhausted their supply of enemies. Seeing them written down they seemed so few compared to how insurmountable they felt in the day to day struggle for the safety of Earth. Jack read the list through again, and then he pointed at the last name on it.

"We could start here," he said, "with Kinsey."

* * *

><p>"Are you afraid of me?" the man asked in a menacing hiss. His face was so close to Daniel's that he could feel every word on his skin.<p>

"Terrified," he replied, and with satisfaction he saw the man hesitate at the calm in his voice. A smirk curled Daniel's lips, but he said nothing more.

He wasn't lying. He was terrified beyond his wits, but it was far from the first time he had felt that way. Spending every day of the past seven years fighting the most evil megalomaniacs in the galaxy, getting tortured with goa'uld hand devices so many times he could honestly say he was used to it by now – that put a lot of things into perspective. Neither fear nor pain had ever made him give in to any goa'uld, and he wasn't about to give in to this man either, no matter what he did to him.

The man backed away. Daniel's unexpected answer had clearly shaken him, and for a moment he seemed to hesitate on how to proceed. Then he gathered his wits and picked up an object from a metal tray.

"What's that," Daniel asked, and this time he could not quite stop the quiver in his voice. He silently cursed himself and forced the fear not to show on his face as well. The man had heard too however, and his lips curved in a vicious grin.

"It's a syringe. Would you like to know what's in it?"

Daniel nodded, not trusting his voice to hold steady. The man tapped the syringe in a motion that oddly reminded Daniel of his good friend and doctor Janet Fraiser. Her shots were usually good though, and he doubted this one would be.

"Midazolam," the man said, "also known as Versed."

"What does it do?"

"Here, for our purposes, it will induce an anterograde amnesia. It will keep you from forming any memories of the rest of our…conversation."

He rubbed Daniel's arm with a sterile pad and inserted the needle. The fluid slid into the vein and Daniel imagined it spreading throughout his body, the beats of his heart pumping it out into his limbs. He felt no different, but if the man standing in front of him was right it was already significantly altering the very way his brain worked.

The man placed the syringe back on the tray and picked up another, tapping it like the first. Daniel remembered now that the action was meant to check for air bubbles in the syringe. Air in the blood could be lethal. Janet had told him that once. It seemed odd that this man would even care.

"What's in that one?" he asked, but received no other reply than the sharp sting of the needle piercing his skin.

The second shot was far from painless. It burned into him like drops of hot lava eating through his veins to his heart. The searing pain reminded him of the pain dealt by the rod of anguish, the pain stick used by the goa'uld for torture. It was an absurd notion, to be able to compare the different types of torture he had experienced over the past years. _So how do you rate this pain?_ He giggled to himself, eliciting an incredulous look from his torturer.

"Doesn't it hurt?" the man asked with a voice full of confusion.

Daniel swallowed another giggle on its way up and nodded.

"It does. But I have felt worse."

The man stared incredulously for another moment. Then he spun around and grabbed a notebook off a table. He pulled up a stool close beside Daniel and sat down with an expression of deep interest etched across his face.

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is mild discomfort and ten is the worst pain imaginable, how would you rate the pain you are experiencing right now?"

Daniel tried to keep from laughing out loud, but he could not stop a small scoff of amusement from escaping. He searched his feelings, evaluating the burning sensation in his limbs. He didn't have to use much imagination to arrange his scale. _Ten_ – that had to be when he died of radiation poisoning. Some memories from his last days alive were still fuzzy from the amnesia he'd gotten on his return to physical form, but he did remember the horrifying feeling of his entire body slowly dissolving. Janet had been forced to keep him on a high dose of sedatives to even dampen the pain. Although, a hand device wielded by a vicious, pissed off goa'uld wasn't far behind. _Should probably put that on nine, or eight. _ The pain stick landed on a solid seven. They were bad, but not like a hand device, which felt like getting a hole drilled into your scull with a laser. _And when it comes to the pain of this drug…_

"I'll have to go with a six," he said.

The man regarded him, again with disbelief, and then he wrote the score down.

"Would you say that your perception of pain has been altered since before you were ascended?"

Now it was Daniel's turn to stare.

"How do you… _What_ do you know about that?"

The man grinned contently.

"I know a great deal of things about you, Dr Jackson. But I am not here to answer your questions. You are here to answer mine."

He stood up and put away the notepad. Then he picked up another syringe.

"Perhaps I should clarify. If you refuse to answer my questions there will be consequences."

He flicked the syringe and Daniel's heart raced with fear. _Consequences_ – that didn't sound good.

"Wait, wait, wait! I wasn't refusing to answer. I was just wondering how you knew I'd been ascended. I…I…what was the question again?"

The man considered him, and then put down the syringe.

"Has your perception of pain been changed by your ascension?"

"No, not the ascension, but I did die before that. That kind of put things into perspective, especially pain."

"What about during the time when you were ascended, did you feel any pain then?"

Daniel shook his head, and knew in the same moment as he did that his reply was not going to be to the inquisitor's liking.

"I don't remember anything from that time."

The glow of curiosity went from the man's eyes like a blown out flame. He gave a loud sigh of disappointment and picked up a syringe from the tray.

"But, but, I can't tell you what I don't know," Daniel pleaded, reflexively pressing himself into the seat of the chair as if he could somehow melt into it and thereby escape the needle. It was a vain and fruitless attempt at retreat. He knew that, but his body was acting on its own accord.

"Oh," the man said patronizingly. "This is not the consequence-kind of injection. It's just something to help you remember. It won't hurt…much."

He stuck the needle in Daniel's arm and depressed the plunger. It didn't hurt, at first – or actually, per se. His heart sped up until he could feel it pounding in his chest, trying to get out through his ribs. The blood rushed through his veins, roaring in his ears. It was uncomfortable, but at the same time it gave him a sense of strength. He felt like he had been given a shot of pure energy, energy that needed to get out and move him around. A yank on the restraints informed him that wasn't going to happen, but for some reason he couldn't accept that. The energy pounding in his ears amplified the anxiety of being trapped. He pulled again and again against the bonds holding him down, but to no avail.

His mouth was getting dry. He was breathing heavily now, and rapidly. It seemed even harder than before to focus his eyes. Spots danced in his view, turning into things that could not possibly be there. Things that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"What's happening?" he gasped.

"Don't worry. It's just some side effects."

The man's voice came to him as if through water, distorted and muffled. His face seemed to float like a balloon as he came to sit on the stool next to Daniel again, the note pad in hand and the pen at the ready.

"Side effects of what?"

"The amphetamine I gave you to help with your memory recall. Now, when you were ascended, do you remember experiencing any pain?"


	4. Snatched Memories - Chapter 4

The clerk outside Senator Kinsey's office looked from the papers on his desk and back to the intimidating apparition in front of him. The colonel was the most terrifying part, and that was saying something regarding the man standing next to him. He was by far the largest man the young man had ever seen, with bulging muscles that his trench coat made barely an attempt at hiding and a face that couldn't have been any more motionless if it had been carved out of stone. Nonetheless it was the expression on the colonel's face that sent icy chills down the clerk's spine and urged a small childish part of him to crawl up in a ball and cry for his mommy. Mustering up every tiny ounce of his courage he pushed the fear aside and met the terror inducing brown eyes.

"Do you have an appointment?" he asked. His voice rang of the bureaucrat's assurance that every unmanageable situation could be curbed by following familiar procedure. And procedure was that the senator usually didn't want to see anyone who didn't have an appointment.

The code of paper pushers worldwide would not serve him well however in the face of this man – colonel Jack O'Neill, the archenemy of paperwork. The colonel locked eyes with him. In a menacingly slow movement he drew a weapon – _it must be a weapon – _from the back of his waistband and leaned over the desk between them. Until this moment the piece of furniture had seemed a small but vitally reassuring barrier, but that impression quickly evaporated when the colonel's hands landed atop its surface and his face came only inches from the clerk's. The gun, under the colonel's right hand, wasn't specifically aimed at him but the implication of its presence was difficult to misinterpret. The clerk decided this was not a wise time to make an attempt.

Jack watched the meager confidence the man had shown melt away from his face, along with all its color. He smiled with a friendliness that was in no way reassuring.

"An appointment?" he asked with a tone of voice that matched the grin on his face, superficially kind but full of dark and horrible possibilities.

The clerk swallowed hard and went to speak, but settled for shaking his head and making an allowing gesture towards the door. A nod told him he had made the right choice.

Jack straightened up and placed the gun back in his belt. His face slid back to grim determination as he stomped over to the door and slammed it open with a force that had it bouncing back off the wall. Kinsey, at his desk, jumped in his seat, but his face quickly settled from startled into the annoyed distain he seemed to reserve just for Jack.

"Colonel O'Neill," he said in a drawl. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Jack steamed across the floor like an ocean liner through water, for a moment looking like he might just plow straight through the desk to get to the senator. He settled for slamming his fist into it and fixing Kinsey with a stare.

"Where is he?"

Kinsey's eyebrows shot up in bewilderment, but a mocking smirk lingered on his lips.

"Where is who?"

"Daniel Jackson! Where is he?"

"Dr. Jackson? Why would I know where he is? You really should keep better track of your teammates, colonel, if you have to come to me to find them."

The derision was most definitely in his voice as well, and it was clear that he enjoyed the waves of desperation radiating off Jack, each one bigger as his replies led the colonel no closer to the answer he sought.

"Tell me where he is," Jack demanded, with figurative steam erupting from his ears.

"I don't know anything."

Kinsey's eyes still held their distain and ridicule, but there was also honesty there that Jack hadn't been expecting. If the senator really didn't know anything the trip to Washington was a dead end and a royal waste of precious time. The thought threatened to take the momentum right out of Jack. He had been going on pure anger ever since he found the note in Daniel's apartment, and though he had a great measure of it, it wasn't a very sustainable energy source. And now the flame was going out. He stared into Kinsey's eyes. Focused on the distain and derision he found there, letting it fuel the embers of anger and bring them back to a blaze. He would _not_ allow himself any rest until Daniel had been brought safely home.

"You know something," he said, his voice dropping to a low growl. His eyes bored into the senator with a threat that he didn't even bother to try and conceal. The expression on Kinsey's face shifted only minutely, but a definite hint of fear entered his eyes.

"Could it be someone in the Trust?" Sam asked, handing the senator a lifeline. He latched on to it like a leech on flesh, nodding just a little too emphatically. An evil grin cracked on Jack's face.

"Good. Then you are gonna tell us who, and where we can find them."

Kinsey shrugged dismissively.

"I don't know who. I _really_ don't know anything."

"You know where they would take him. You know where the safe houses are." Jack leaned over the desk, into the senator's face. Without looking down his hand found a paper and a pen and pushed them towards him. "Make a list of where we should look."

The senator held his fierce stare for a moment, probably thinking of protesting. Thinking of protecting his old NID friends. A moment was all he could manage, before he seemed to make up his mind against it. He looked down, grabbed the pen and started dotting down GPS coordinates.

They returned to the SGC to review the list. After a couple of hours Hammond joined them in the briefing room to see what Sam had found.

"Alright," she began. "I ran all the locations Kinsey gave us and I found two that I think are the most likely places we'll find Daniel."

She hit a few keys on her laptop and a map of Colorado Springs popped up on the big screen. There were two red dots on it. She pointed to one of them, on the outskirts of town.

"There's an old factory building here. It's been empty and abandoned for years but I dug a little deeper and found that the owner is a shell company for the Trust. And this," she pointed at the other dot. "According to the satellite images I have found, this is a cabin or something like that. It's completely off the grid. Not on any maps, and there's only a small dirt road to access it. We probably wouldn't even know it existed if Kinsey hadn't given us the coordinates."

"The second one sounds like the place," Jack said.

Teal'c bowed his head.

"I concur."

The three members of SG-1 looked at their general. He nodded to.

"Go get our boy home."

* * *

><p>"I don't know!"<p>

Daniel's scream echoed against the white walls and seemed to reverberate in the metal trays with their torturous tools. His voice was hoarse from too much screaming. He'd long ago given up on suffering stoically, and under the influence of the drugs his entire world had been turned into a haze of pain, delusions, and quite a bit of frustration. To his muddled mind his voice arrived loud and distant at the same time, distorted to the point where he wondered whether it was his speaking that wasn't clear. Perhaps that was the reason the man kept asking about his ascension even though he kept telling him he didn't know, that he didn't remember. And every time he couldn't answer he picked up another syringe and gave him another shot.

Mostly it was pain drugs. _As if agony would convince me to remember._ A couple of times it was more amphetamine, when he actually managed to convince his torturer he couldn't remember. Each dose added a new dimension to the insanity. Hallucinations danced before his eyes. Eruptions of color and strange sounds that didn't belong in the hospital white room. Goa'uld symbiotes swam through the air and dove towards Daniel and the other man, slithering under and over their skin.

At one point the man asked him to try and use any of the powers he'd allegedly had as an ascended. Daniel wasn't even entirely sure what those abilities had been, but regardless he refused.

"Even if I knew how to, I wouldn't show you," he slurred, and his torturer responded with another syringe full of pain.

In a moment of clarity, or a part of his brain that was still capable of analytical thought, he found it strange that the pain was so intense. From what he knew about amphetamine – albeit not from personal experience – it should dull the pain, but it rather seemed to increase. He asked about it, but his torturer just laughed and went back to his fruitless interrogation. Unlike the amphetamine and versed he didn't seem to want to tell Daniel what the pain drug was, and that in itself gave Daniel a creeping suspicion of its origin. He already suspected that his kidnappers were rogue NID, or the Trust as they called themselves now. Given that they were it was not farfetched to assume they had acquired some drugs from off-world to use for these kinds of purposes. They had always been very interested in anything that could be used as a tool for pain and death.

The effect of the drug kicked in and agony swept the clarity from Daniel's mind, plunging him back into a world of screaming, gritted teeth and questions he didn't know the answer to. His only respite was that the pain for a time overshadowed the insanity brought on by the amphetamine, but that would come back too. It did every time.

Ultimately, the inquisitor gave up. He didn't exactly give up first, even if he was forced to do so because Daniel was starting to slip in and out of consciousness, unable even to scream when he received another injection of the pain drug. Daniel was distantly aware of speaking not directed at him and then another man came into the room, to help his torturer drag him back to the cell. They slammed the door shut and left him, in blessed silent darkness.

He lay were they had dropped him, face down on the pile of dirty straw. It tickled his nose, irritated his allergies, but his brain didn't seem able to communicate to his body what it was supposed do about it. In the end he just drifted off to sleep, the cocktail of drugs in his system taking him away to erratic and terrifying dreams.


	5. Snatched Memories - Chapter 5

They approached the cabin just after midnight, backed up by a team of marines. The weather was on their side with dark clouds that hung low over the tree tops and blotted out both the moon and the stars. The only light came from the windows of the small building. It sifted through the trees like fen-fires, hopefully leading the way to their missing teammate.

Their first target was the generator, housed in a small shed beside the cabin. Sam slunk inside with a pair of cable cutters in her hand and a moment later the lights in the windows went out.

"Night goggles on," Jack ordered in a loud whisper before switching to hand signals. He pointed out two of the marines to come with him. The three of them would go in through the back door, at the same time as the rest of the rescue team circled around and attacked from the front.

Jack opened the door and stepped into a small kitchen, his rifle at the ready and his finger on the trigger. The night goggles painted the counters and appliances a mossy green. The room was empty, but there was a still steaming cup of coffee on the counter that told him someone had been there very recently. Jack gave a signal to the marines and proceeded towards the next room. He carefully pushed the swivel door open and found himself face to face with Teal'c.

"This building appears to be empty," said the jaffa in a level voice.

Jack lowered his weapon and took a look around the room that made up the rest of the cabin. It looked like a living room, but it was obvious it served as more than that. There were a couple of sofas placed around a cold fireplace. Pillows and blankets lay strewn over them; signs that people had been sleeping there. The room may be empty now, just like the kitchen, but there was definitely someone living here.

Muffled sounds intruded on the silence; raised voices depressed by soil and stone, sifting up from somewhere below their feet. A more thorough search of the room revealed a trapdoor in the wooden floor, hastily hidden by a crumpled up rug as someone had scampered down inside.

Jack pulled the hatch open. The hinges creaked and they waited anxiously for a reaction from the dark below. The sounds of voices were louder through the open hole, and it appeared that the argument had hidden the soft sound of the hinges. Jack nodded pleasedly. They still had a bit of surprise element on their side. _Unless they're down there getting ready to fight us. Or worse – getting rid of the evidence._

He quickly climbed down the ladder. The darkness was compact, almost physically solid. He raised his rifle and flicked on the torch attached to the barrel. The cone of light lanced through the dark to reveal a long corridor. It ran straight as an arrow and ended somewhere in the distance that was still occupied by shadows. The smooth concrete walls carried reverberations of the argument still going strong, but he could still not make out any words.

As soon as the rest of the rescue team had joined him he set off down the corridor. After a while he noticed that the floor was tilting in a gentle slope that brought them further and further underground. _If there is no other way out this could get hairy. _

A light came into view up ahead. Jack turned off his torch and signaled the others to do the same, before he continued forward in a crouch. His finger twitched with tension, hovering on the trigger and just itching to press it to riddle an enemy with well deserved holes. The light became clearer in the absence of their torches, and he saw that it swept back and forth, shakily outlining an open doorway. The voices that had become successively louder were now clear enough for Jack to make out the words.

"It must be the generator, I told you. It does this sometimes. Nothing weird about it." The man speaking sounded exasperated, as if he had had enough of the argument – or the person he was arguing with.

Jack crept the last steps to the door and peeked in. The room beyond was some kind of office, and it reminded him of a waiting room at the doctor's. There were two men inside, standing on either side of a large desk full of papers and files. Each of them held a flashlight, and the beams flew across the room in time with their angry gestures.

"Get up there and fix it!" the man behind the desk yelled.

"But, you just said…"

"Oh, just get it done!" The angry man cut him off dismissively. "I can't work in these conditions."

There was a huff from the other man and a mutter of intelligible words that sounded a lot like curses, but he turned around without any further argument. The light played over the walls as he turned, momentarily hitting a door, a couple of chairs, a table, a bookshelf, before landing on Jack in the doorway. The man's hand shot up to his hip, to a revolver holstered there.

"Don't even think about it," Jack said, stepping inside with the rifle trained on the man's chest. Behind him Sam and Teal'c entered, followed by the marines. Realization of just how outnumbered he was dawned on the man's face and he made a sign of surrendering.

"Good choice," Jack said. "Now carefully take the gun out and slide it over to me."

The man pulled the revolver from its holster with his index finger and thumb, and tossed it towards Jack. Without taking his eyes, or the barrel of the rifle, off his target Jack bent down and picked the weapon up. He pointed to the chairs.

"Get over there and sit down. Both of you."

The two men did as they were told, though the angry one still looked more annoyed than afraid. The four marines stayed behind in the 'waiting-room' to guard them while Jack, Sam and Teal'c continued on to find Daniel.

The second door led to another dark corridor. This one was narrower than the first, almost claustrophobic if one had that inclination, and it felt a little damp. Jack's thoughts went to a horror movie, or a thriller, and it sent chills down his spine to think of what that kind of setting might mean for Daniel. He flicked his torch on again and tried to shrug off the eeriness as he stepped into the corridor.

The doorway melted into the darkness behind them, and after a while they came upon a door on the left hand side. Blank steel shone with reflections from their torches and the handle turned silently in Jack's hand. He stepped in and froze in his tracks. The things he saw made his skin crawl, particularly in the light of the night goggles and flashlight. Ice dripped down from his spine to gather in the pit of his stomach. He knew what this kind of room was for. He knew all too well. _Daniel…what have they done to you? _He retreated and closed the door behind him, ignoring the questioning looks from his teammates as he continued down the corridor.

Finally they reached the end, where they found another door. This one was made of wood; thick, coarse planks that felt mossy under his touch. A sturdy bar lay across it on strong iron hooks. Teal'c easily lifted the heavy bar and Jack pulled the door open.

The room beyond was a world apart from the previous one, mirroring the stark contrast of the two doors. Where the first room had been clinically white and clean, this one was dark and dank. The first had smelled of disinfectant, while this one smelled of earth and human excrement. The walls were made of blocks of stone and the floor was bare rock covered by a thin layer of dirt and straw that gathered to a pile near the back wall.

On the straw pile sat Daniel, blinking and squinting against the light of their torches. He recoiled when Jack stepped in towards him. The look of fear on his friend's face threatened to break Jack's heart clean in two. He pushed the goggles up on his head and turned the rifle towards the floor.

"Daniel…"

Blue eyes tried to focus, fighting to adjust to the light and the lack of his spectacles.

"Jack?" Doubt echoed in his voice, clear even though the uttered word was little more than a raspy croak. Jack knelt down beside him, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, buddy. It's me. We're here."

A relived smile washed the uncertainty from Daniel's face, and Jack felt his muscles relax.

"I knew you'd come," he whispered, reaching up to squeeze Jack's hand.

They sat for a moment, just holding on to each other as Daniel seemed to revel in the presence of his friends. Then he let Jack help him to his feet. He wobbled a little and grabbed onto Jack when they started to walk.

"What did they do to you?"

Jack was a little afraid of what the answer might be but he had to ask. Daniel bit his lip, and then shook his head.

"I don't know. There was this…doctor. He gave me a shot and after that, I can't remember."

Jack frowned, but he held his voice light when he spoke again.

"That's okay, Danny. Don't worry about it."

They stepped out into the corridor, and the sound of a commotion reached their ears. Screams echoed from the 'waiting-room', mixed with the crashing of furniture breaking. A shot rang out, sharp and definite, followed by a burst of rapid fire. Sam and Teal'c ran, and Daniel waved Jack to go as well.

"I'll be fine," he said, steadying himself against the wall.

Jack gave him a scrutinizing look but got another insistent wave.

"Go help them!"

By the time Jack made it to the end of the corridor the sounds of battle had subsided. He stepped into a room that had been transformed. Every piece of furniture was toppled over. Books and papers were strewn around, and two bodies lay prone on the floor. One of them wore the marines' green uniform; the other was the man with the revolver.

Sam was on her knees checking their wounds, but Jack could tell by her movements that they were already beyond her field medic skills.

"I'm sorry, sir. They rushed us," said one of the remaining marines. He looked embarrassed to have been overpowered by two unarmed men, and Jack found himself thinking that he actually ought to be. However, there was no use rubbing it in.

"Where's the other guy?" he asked.

"He got away, sir. Clarke and Dobbs went after him."

Jack looked around again and noticed that two of the marines were indeed missing. He nodded his approval.

"Jack…"

A weak voice sounded from the door behind him. He spun around and saw Daniel leaning heavily on the frame.

"Can we go home now?"


	6. Snatched Memories - Chapter 6

"So he really can't remember anything?"

Daniel lay on the infirmary bed and let people talk over his head. They'd been doing that for a while now, and all the familiar voices had appeared, disappeared and reappeared. Currently it was General Hammond and Dr. Fraiser who were talking. Discussing the somewhat unfortunate fact of his amnesia. Well, he supposed it was unfortunate. Everybody said it was, but a part of him suspected that there may be things about the events he couldn't remember that he should be glad he didn't. For one thing, there was the clue of the aftereffects of said events.

He had felt generally fuzzy when Jack and the others broke him out. The world had been foggy, and it hadn't only been because of his glasses being missing. More worryingly, his entire body had been hurting with a fiery kind of ache that mainly seemed to emanate from within. When Janet examined him she had not found a mark on him to explain it, just a few prick marks on his left arm. She'd made one of her own, drawing some blood to test, and found a concoction of drugs that inspired her to immediately tuck him in for the night in one of the observation rooms. It didn't pass him by that the door had been locked behind him, but he choose to ignore it. He was so tired, and besides it felt quite a moot point to argue.

He had been left alone through the night, unless you counted the invisible eyes observing him from behind the windows, and in the morning Janet had returned with the General in tow. Currently they were discussing his 'condition', while he stared at a nondescript spot in the roof.

"It all comes down to the drugs he was given," he heard Janet explain. "The Versed will have impeded the memory encoding. That I can understand, in a sense, but the other drugs I can't figure why they gave him."

"Tell me about them," Hammond asked.

"He had quite a lot of amphetamine in his system. Not dangerously much, but enough to mess with his head on a pretty big scale. I can't imagine what they thought to achieve by it." She shook her head and gave Daniel a compassionate glance. "And then there's the…third drug. There wasn't much of it, it must have metabolized quickly, but I assume it is the reason for the pain he's been experiencing."

"Will he recover?"

"Yes, I think he will be alright. He will have to get through the amphetamine withdrawal, and he might need some close watching for the next few days. I can't speak to the psychological effects, but physically they didn't actually give him as much as a bruise."

Daniel let the voices wash over him, listening without making any signs that he did. He didn't feel alright. He felt tired, above anything else – as if all his strength and will power had been sapped from him. It crossed his mind that if the people who had kidnapped him had used their drugs for interrogation, it might actually have served them better to wait until the withdrawal put him in this state before asking any questions. He doubted he could put up much of a resistance at the moment. He might just give anything to anyone who asked.

It was a quiet and sad thought, fluttering through his mind like a wet bird and scaring up other more or less disjointed thoughts. There was a smidge of pride directed at the conviction that he had indeed resisted what the kidnappers had thrown at him. It could be no other way if he judged by the amount of effort they must have put in, indicated by the state in which he had awoken in the cell shortly before the rescue team arrived. Then there was a sniggering little notion that he should be lucky the people around him now were all his friends, given the aforementioned listlessness he was experiencing. For some reason, though, he couldn't quite muster the feeling of gratitude, or the happiness he should feel to be home safely.

Another fluttering thought caught his attention. _Doesn't this situation feel a little familiar?_ He had to admit it did, even if he was just admitting it to himself. Although classic human drugs were new to him, withdrawal wasn't. There'd been that time with Shyla and her damned sarcophagus that he got addicted to. And then there'd been the planet with the hypnotic lights which almost had him taking a dive off his apartment building. Both times he had felt pretty much like this coming off of the high. He felt like all the brightness had gone out of the world. Hopeless, ready to give it all up and throw in the towel – permanently. He remembered feeling a bit like this when he was dying too, but at the same time that had been an altogether different story. For starters the dying part had come first then and brought the despondency in its wake.

There was one thing that linked it all. The times had been different, the 'drugs' had been different, and the symptoms had been different, but there was one constant through it all. _Jack._ He'd always been there; talking him down despite the gun in his hand, pulling him off the ledge, and letting him go when he asked him. He'd been there through a million other things too, and now he was…right next to the bed. Daniel smiled in spite of the darkness in his heart, clutching onto trust so deep rooted it was almost an instinct. _Jack is here – and maybe I will be alright._

* * *

><p><strong>The End<strong>


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